


See What Tomorrow Brings

by Orlha



Category: Naruto
Genre: Angsty in the first 3 chps, But Sakura is from far far future, Crack, F/M, Feel-good, Fluff and Humor, Konoha would like a refund, Light-Hearted, Lots of Fuinjutsu, Raidou is done, Relationships! Assuming we'll get there, Sakura is the same age as Kakashi and Genma, Self-Indulgent, Time Travel, Unlikely to be ever completed, Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-11
Updated: 2021-01-29
Packaged: 2021-03-09 19:40:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 9,833
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27511693
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Orlha/pseuds/Orlha
Summary: Sakura is from Modern Konoha, a proud seal researcher of the largest corporation in the world- Hatake Corps, when the experimental seal goes awry sending her more than 2000 years back, to the early generations of Konoha. She has to come to terms with shinobis actually existing now, where death is an ever looming axe over her neck, also accidentally revolutionizing seals while dragging her babysitters and their shinobi friends along kicking and screaming.Konoha will never know what hits them when she is done. No, they will. Because phones are now a thing."What do you mean you don't have telephones?! It's just a seal!" "No. Sakura." "Yes Sakura.""Sakura,please, I beg of youstop putting heat seals on people's walls." "But it's so cold!! Why don't you have thermoregulating seals in your houses?""What's cars?" "What do you mean there's no cars even to other cities?" "NO SAKURA"
Relationships: Haruno Sakura/Hatake Kakashi, Haruno Sakura/Shiranui Genma
Comments: 98
Kudos: 415
Collections: Team 7 🌀, why im sleep deprived 💖✨





	1. Not in Konoha City no more

**Author's Note:**

> A BIG WARNING for people reading this. This is UNLIKELY to be ever completed. It's just been a pet project that I've been steadily writing when the muse hits and I've now so many words that it seems a waste that no one will enjoy Sakura breaking Konoha's collective minds.
> 
> I don't know if we'll hit the relationships, because that's roughly chp 7-10. Meanwhile, enjoy! Hope you love this as much as I did writing it.

Sakura pulsed the hot water seal on her kettle as she prepared her morning cup of coffee. Down the hallway, she could hear her brother’s baby wail, followed by Yuuichi’s swearing.

“Long night?” she smirks at him when he finally enters the kitchen, hair ruffled, clothes rumpled, bouncing baby Tomoe in his arms.

“Tell me about it,” Yuuichi muttered. “Mind helping me prepare her milk? Maya hadn’t been able to send any of her milk over.”

Sakura tips the freshly brewed hot water into a baby bottle, turning on the disinfectant seal and letting it set for a while before pouring the water out and adding milk powder and hot water. 

“You think with instantaneous transport seals, she would be able send it over, you know, _instantly.”_ Sakura adjusted the heat temperature seal on the bottle before handing it to her older brother.

“It’s more about the time it takes to pump. With her contract meetings, she never has time to—”

Sakura tuned his excuses away. Sakura didn’t have a good impression of Maya. Ever since she had given birth to Tomoe, she had all but abandoned Tomoe to them and gone off to ‘work’. Sakura could count the number of times she had see Maya in spite of them living in the same house. Fact is, in spite of Sakura’s high pressure work for Hatake Corporation as their lead seal scientist, Sakura looked after Tomoe far more than Maya did and that even took into consideration where Sakura came home only two or three times a week.

“Well, I have to get going.” She gulps down her coffee. “We’re testing a new seal this week— I can’t tell you what it’s going to do—”

“Sakura! Don’t go breaking your NDAs—” 

“but I _can_ tell you that it’ll change the way we travel.” 

She winks at him and Yuuichi sighs. “I heard nothing. I swear, one of these days, your mouth is going to kill you. I’ll see you in three days.” He ruffled her hair and watched her tug on her heels. 

“Pfft, like they would kill me just because I told you something. Itterasshai!”

“Ittekimasu!”

✥.✥.✥

Sakura flips through the drafts. 

“I added the Amatsu-Mikaboshi glyph on the caudal of the seal. It seems to have helped stablise,” her fellow research says as he taps the new additional on the latest draft.

“Danyi of Sand Mountains had done a trial last night which was successful on a small scale.” 

Sakura paused her finger on the report. 

‘ _Test trial 10 out of 10 successful._ ’ 

Nodding to Hyeon-jeong, they started painting with chakra infused ink, carefully making each stroke is perfect.

“Testing on Lab Rat-320,” Sakura says as she places the cage down. 

“Sakura! Sakura! By the balls of Kakashi—”

“Ino! We’re currently—”

Someone pushes Sakura as the seal lights up and she stumbles forward, into the seal.

“Sakura!”

Then her vision is flooded with light and everything turns to white.

Sakura wakes up in the middle of a forest, clutching Lab Rat-320.

“Definitely not in Konoha City anymore,” Sakura says somewhat hysterically. The seal shouldn’t have sent her out of the city or even out of the lab. It’s matching pair had been only two meters from her, yet she’s in a fucking forest that had to be all old growth trees. Forests around Konoha had mostly been depleted from the city’s expansion. The nearest location for trees like this would be the borders of Hi. 

She takes her phone out to call the labs or even the park guards. 

“Balls of H Kakashi. What are the chances in the sage fucking world that I would land up in a cellular-less area.” She tucks her phone back into her lab coat, hugging the cage tightly. “Okay, _okay._ I can do this. There should be towns nearby. I swear by the balls of Kakashi and Minato, they should have a fucking phone. Who doesn’t have a phone?” 

She picks herself up, glad that the cage has a handle and starts walking. Eventually she throws her heels away as they keep sinking into the soft soil. Sakura walks until the sun sets. Her feet are bleeding, her legs are sore. The next day is filled with even more walking. Sakura doesn’t come across a town, a camper or any sort of living person. She didn’t think it was possible in a country as populated as Hi. 

“You think with our eight million population, there would be _one_ person out…” She checks her phone again. Still no reception.

Then after five hours of endless walking, she sees a person lying on the ground. “Oh! Hey!” She hurries forward in spite of her muscle protesting. “Oh my! Are you okay?” Sakura immediately crouches next to the person, hands fluttering over him. There is a large gaping gash across the person’s chest, through his army green vest. “What am I saying? Of course you’re not okay!” 

Quickly she calculated the type and number of glyphs for the seal she needs to arrest the blood and paints on his skin, thankful that she never went anywhere without her chakra ink and brushes. 

“Bandages, bandages.” Sakura ignores the strange metal plate on the man’s bandana. “What was it that Yuuichi used?” 

She slaps her forehead, trying to remember the medical seal that Yuuichi had used on her before. “Amaterasu on the rostral, Omoikane on the left caudal…” she mutters as she paints another seal on the other hand. 

“What do you think you’re doing?” a low baritone asks. She freezes at the feeling of cold metal against her throat.

“He’s bleeding out! Was I supposed to try to wake him and ask him for permission?” Sakura retorted. She might not be a medical personnel like her older brother was, but Sakura was a seal researcher. She had her legal obligation to aid anyone in need of help too. 

“And what did you think you were going to do?”

“Seal up his wound of course! What did you think I was going to do?” She shook as the metal pressed just an infinitesimally harder against her skin. “Lo-look— if I don’t stop his bleeding… He’s going to die in six minutes or so. I have my ID in my pocket okay? If you let me take it out…”

The metal doesn’t move, so she takes it as a sign of acknowledgement. Pulling her lab badge from her pocket, she tosses it to the stranger behind her. 

“Ca-can I continue?” Sakura’s not very sure herself why she’s so insistent on saving the man lying in front of her. It’s not like she _knows_ him. Perhaps this is some kind of weird new game, the new agers have started? Wearing historical uniforms and pretending to be them…

“Haruno Sakura. Lead Seal Researcher of _Hatake_ Corporation?” The metal loosens just a little and she quickly paints on the last few seals, flushing her chakra through the seal. Latching onto the blood arresting seal on the man’s opposite hand, it lights up. The wound where his injury had gone through the vest, flesh and bone creeped towards each other rapidly, knitting together and after several long minutes, leaving nothing but pink new flesh. 

It’s not as good or as fast as Yuuichi’s would have been, but the man would live and that’s more than anyone else can do for him. 

“You sealed it up… without medical chakra?” The man who had put the metal against her throat, leans down next to her, checking on the injured man’s wound. 

“Y-yes? Seals are more— stable… Too many accidents with medical chakra…” She fidgets under the man’s stare, knowing it’s not that there are too many accidents with medical chakra, but _she_ had too many accidents with medical chakra. She did know how to use medical chakra and knew enough of the anatomy to fix most things… Anyway, _seals_ were where she was comfortable with and is considered some sort of genius in that area. Her uncanny memory coupled with the ability to calculate and decipher on the fly had made her contributions to the World Seal Association quite hefty.

“I- I’m not as good as Yuuichi… bu-but, I’m the lead seal researcher of Hatake Corporation after all. It’s protocol… to know first aid in case of accidents.” _Not really._ Sakura’s a medical researcher turned seal researcher, not that it’s publicised or anything. Getting sued for a medical chakra accident had been the low point of her career.

“Yes… _Hatake Corporation,”_ the man says, his voice drier than the sands of Suna. “I wasn’t aware that Kakashi had such a business.”

“A— are you… two… _cosplayers?”_ Sakura asked. It seemed the only likely explanation, now that she has gotten a better look at the two men. She remembers vaguely of the museums with shinobi outfits, describing how people in the Shinobi Era had worn. The man had gotten it seemingly accurate, right down to the weapons they used. She isn’t any sort of historian, but she had watched enough TV and documentaries on it to recognise the kunai and jounin vests and the strange snail they had engraved on their metal plates.

“Cost-play-er?” the man repeats. “More importantly, is he going to be okay?”

“He’ll need to eat some liver to boost his bone marrow, take supplementary iron pills and go easy on exercises since he’ll be anemic for _at least_ a week,” she rattles off a series of instructions to the man. “Now,” Sakura says and the man turned to look properly at her. There’s an odd web scar across the man’s face. 

_‘Perhaps mafia?’_ Sakura thinks hysterically. Had she saved someone they were trying to bury in the forest? Was she next since she saw them?

“Do you have a phone?” she asks in the most even voice that she could muster. Hopefully, she could get away with pretending she hadn’t noticed anything special. Sakura didn’t know too many aggressive seals. Aggressive seals were the seals were under military jurisdiction, something she had purposefully refused to show interest in in order to not be pulled in. 

“Ho-n?” the man repeats.

‘ _Sweet merciful balls of Kakashi. Please tell me he’s not playing the ignorant role.’_

“Yes, the phone,” she pauses. If she made a fuss of calling someone, the mafia might consider her trying to snitch on them. That would be terrible. “Or if you could give me a lift to the nearest town?”

“ _Lift?”_ the man repeats again.

She tightens her grip on the rat cage and Rat-320 squeaks a little. ‘ _Sweet merciful balls of Kakashi,’_ she thinks, trying not to hyperventilate.

“Our sealing experiment seems to have gone awry. Don’t worry, the expenses for giving me a lift will be borne by my company,” Sakura says.

The man gives her a long measuring look, long enough that Sakura starts to wonder if he’s going to kill her and bury her beside the man that she apparently most definitely shouldn’t have saved. Then he stands, so swiftly, that it startles her and the cage loosens in her hands, almost dropping onto the ground had it not been for the man catching it.

Rat-320 squeaks angrily at her as he puts it back in her arms. 

Hoisting the previously injured man across his shoulders, he says just a single “come”, curt and abrupt just like the way he appeared. 

“Wait! The man— I know his injury is gone—” Sakura starts then quickly backpedals. ‘ _Sweet merciful balls of Kakashi, all the times that Yuuichi told me to learn to keep my mouth shut before it kills me… and sure enough, I’m going to die because I couldn’t control my mouth…’_

She closes her eyes as the man stops and turns to her, her shoulders shaking so hard that the cage rattles in her arms. 

“Come, Haruno-san,” he says again, this time in a surprisingly gentler tone. “I don’t know what _lift_ you’re talking about, but you saved my squadmate, I can bring you to the nearest town.”

She peeks one eye at him, then blinks owlishly at him. “Y-you’re not… gonna… kill me?”

“No… My squad mate owes you a life debt. It’d be dishonorable to kill you, wouldn’t it?”

“I— I— I guess?”

He puts his hands together and does some weird finger shaking thing and suddenly there’s two of him. 

“Do I carry him this way?” the man asks. The previously injured man is now lying sideways across both of his shoulders, the scarred man’s hooking the injured man’s arm and knee looped together.

“Yes. This way is better for his fresh skin.” 

He nods, the copy of him kneels before her, his back facing her and motions to her. “I’ll carry you.”

“I can walk.”

“Civilian walking is slow.”

“I’ll let you know that I exercise—” she says, insistent on not having a strange man carry her. Wouldn’t his vehicle be somewhere close by? How long had the man walked out here? Maya always said how big Hi Country was… 

Her thoughts are cut off by the copy snatching her into his arms and wrangling her onto his back in an oddly smooth and seemingly practiced move. His hands are politely placed on the back of her knees, far from any… _impolite_ touching _._

With a leap and bound, Sakura leaves her stomach and heart behind, too startled and shocked to even scream. 

Sweet merciful balls of Kakashi, these _new ager cosplayers_ did some serious exercising to keep up to the legends of the feats from the Shinobi Age.


	2. Correct city, wrong time

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Eh.. Like I said in the tags, the first 3 chps are angst before we get to Sakura breaking stuff... But apparently the 1st chp was really funny... Some clarity on Sakura's time and what not.

The nearest town… is well, barely a village. There’s likely a hundred thousand give and take in this entire establishment. This is the smallest town she has seen. 

The scarred man, _Raidou_ as he introduced himself during his run, signs her in and steers to the largest building in the village. “What town is this?” she asks.

He raises an eyebrow at her. “This is Konohagakure.”

“ _What?”_

She stops and spins around. Rat-320 squeaks at her sudden movement. 

Konoha. 

Konoha hasn’t been called Konohagakure for the last two thousand years. Not since the SW5, not since the downsizing of shinobi forces eventually led to it being abolished.

She stares at the people jumping across the rooftops, all wearing the same army green vest like the new ager cosplayers did. Some of them wore white masks and white armor over their black uniforms. Like the ANBU in history.

Like the Black ops.

The ones that kill.

Shinobis.

That kill.

WITH CHAKRA.

She lets Raidou usher her down the street and into the red building, into the top most room that had windows from side to side. The village, whose tallest building is at most six floors, is Konoha. Her legs give out beneath her at the view.

 _Her Konoha_ had over eight _million_ people squeezed into 700 odd square kilometers. A city so wide, that she couldn’t even see the forest from her thirty-two floor apartment window.

“Haruno-san?” Raidou says. He puts a hand on her shoulder and lightly shakes her.

Her shoulder shake, this time not from fear but from the sheer ridiculousness of the situation.

“The calculations were right,” she says, laughing mirthlessly. “THE CALCULATIONS WERE RIGHT. I moved two meters just like the sage damned balls of Kakashi seal glyphs were told to. TWO METERS. Just didn’t specify what sage damned time. You would think the Amatsu-Mikaboshi glyph would have told it to go LINEAR. APPARENTLY IT DOESN’T.”

She laughs and laughs, her breaths coming in short and rapid. Sakura’s hyperventilating. She knows this. 

She’s unintentionally created a seal that went back in time. After all the researchers that had tried for thousands of years, millions and billions of money wasted into that and it’s _her_ that unintentionally created a seal that she hadn’t wanted.

“Year. What year it is?” she turns to Raidou and asks. 

“56?” 

“56,” she repeats. 

Her diaphragm hurts from laughing, her eyes are hot with unshed tears, shoulders shaking, she says it again, “AFV _56._ And… you...” She looks pointedly at the old man behind the desk. “You… must the Hokage, the Hokage that’s still a shinobi.”

The old man frowns at her. But before he can even ask anything, the words burst out of her. “From where I’m from… It’s the year 2060. AFV 2060. Where Konoha has eight million people living in it. Where shinobis are a myth.” She slumps, exhausted. “By the balls of Kakashi I don’t even know how this could had happened— I mean like, fuck me.”

“By the balls of Kakashi?” she hears Raidou whisper.

“That…” The old man seems to stare into her soul then purses his lips. “Take her to Inoichi-dono.”

“Hokage-sama, she saved Shiranui’s life.”

The old man nods at his words. “Then stay with her and make sure honor is upheld on behalf of Shiranui-san until proven otherwise.”

Sakura follows Raidou’s directions out of the room, down the hallway. She can’t help but stare out through every window she passes. She hears the sound of the leaves rustling like an orchestra rising to the conductor. She hadn’t known that nature could sound that way. Her breath hitches and Raidou puts a hand on her shoulder. Whether it’s to be comforting or to prevent her from escaping, Sakura isn’t sure. Considering how fast he had moved through the trees, she didn’t think she would get far even if she tried. Where would she go to in a time that isn’t her own?

A bad dream, Sakura thinks and looks down at her feet. The muddy caked mess on her feet, her big toenail had ripped off sometime during her trek. A tetanus nightmare.

“I’ll get you some sandals by the time you get out,” he tells her as he shows her to a room that looks more like a detention cell in a police station.

Sakura doesn’t say anything else. What else can she say? Sakura studied history in school as a major. While she hadn’t specialised in the Shinobi Era, she had remembered enough to know it had been a bloody era. She stares down at her soft hands, her well-manicured fingers with red nail polish on it and knows she would never fit in here.

“Haruno Sakura?”

She looks up at the new presence and blinked. “Ino?”

“What?” The blond haired man asks. “I’m Yamanaka Inoichi, I’m here to—”

“Why do you look like Ino?” She shakes her head and forces herself to take a breath. She will not break here. She is Haruno Sakura, she’s been through some real shit before and dragged herself out of it. This will not break her. 

“I apologise,” she says. “I’m not sure if they told you about me. But you look almost similar to my friend Yamanaka Ino. It’s just… belatedly, I realised that— _duh_ , _Yamanaka._ It’s just weird. You two are so similar that you could have been her dad.”

Inoichi takes the seat across the small metal table, his pale blue eyes softening just a little. 

“What is she to you?”

“My best friend, soulmate of the heart, and probably sisters in everything but blood.” She looks down at the table. Rat-320 is sleeping in its cage. Why had she carried it all over anywhere? “I— I assume… based on the type of room, you are going to interrogate me?” Sakura smiles wanly at Inoichi.

She had been in the police cell once and it had played out almost similarly. At least then, she had been on the victim side, rather than a suspect. 

Inoichi nods. “What’s your name, age, profession, parents’ names.”

“Haruno Sakura, aged twenty, Lead Seal researcher. My dad is Haruno Kizashi and my mum is Senju Mebuki.”

“Senju?” he asks.

“Yea?”

“Who are her parents?”

“My mum?” Sakura asks. No one had ever been interested in her mum. Not that her mum isn’t awesome, just that her mum was the sort who enjoyed being in the background much like Yuuichi did. 

“Well… they said that my mother had a lot more Nara blood in her than Senju and maybe a quarter of Houzuki and a quarter Chikamatsu?” She shrugs. Being mixed blood in Konoha hadn’t been special. Almost everyone born in the city had been mixed. The only “pure-blooded” people she knew had been fourth removed cousin, Nara Shikamaru and his brother, Nara Shikaten from her mother’s side. That had been a weird coincidence because it hadn’t been intentional, or so she had been told.

Inoichi carefully puts his pen down. “I’m going to mindwalk you now. What this will do is project me into your mind so I can see your memories.”

“What—”

Without waiting, Inoichi held up his fingers at her then everything went dark.

✥.✥.✥

Sakura woke up in her bed, in her twenty-third floor apartment. Ivy and mini-hydrangeas fluttered in the breeze as she pushed herself off the bed. 

_Ino!_

“Morning Ino,” she yawns, stalking past Ino to the coffee pot. “What’s that?”

_Is that the Ino you were talking about?_

“Your _cousin,_ Shikamaru, dropped it off this morning.” Ino pushes the stack of notes to her. “You two are such _nerds._ ”

Sakura flips through the paper, reading the notes he had marked in red on the draft. “Thirty-two, F=G… _Hey!”_

Sakura lunges forward a step too late to snatch the papers from Ino’s hands. 

“It’s _breakfast_ time, Sakura. You can wait until after breakfast before you start another seal marathon,” Ino sniffs with a flick of her hair and points to the rice and grilled fish on the table.

“But _Ino!_ ” she whines. “Shikamaru nearly solved the equation on the character balances.”

“ _Character._ I don’t even know what that is. Don’t you guys use… watcha callit. _Glyphs?_ ” Ino says with a raised eyebrow. Very carefully, understanding the importance of the papers, she rolls the papers up and sticks it up her shirt. Ino gives her a look and folds her arms.

Sakura whined, knowing that she wasn’t going to get to read it until she completed Ino’s task. “Glyphs are just a set of commonly used characters for a set of instructions. Since we’re trying to design a completely new seal that’s never been done before, we need to design our own set. Which unfortunately means we need to calculate the weightage of energy versus elements usage to balance it.” 

“Sakura—”

Chugging her coffee down, Sakura shoves rice into her mouth. “Each energy has a different weight and needs a counter for it not to explode. Each kanji have a different stroke count and the length of each stroke needs to be factored in because that would result in an uneven amount of chakra available in the seal due to the amount of chakra infused ink used. 

“All of which, of course, with the slightest unbalance, can cause the seal to explode. Which is why explosive seals are the easiest and heat seals are the second hardest. The hardest, of course, would be the space time as you need to calculate the weight, movement in time and space in a four dimension sense.”

“STOP!” 

Sakura pauses in mid action, a grain of rice loosening off her chopsticks and onto the table. 

“I don’t need to know it. Sweet merciful balls of Kakashi, I take your word for it, okay?”

_Sweet merciful balls of Kakashi? Why Kakashi?_

The room changes. Sakura is thirteen and in history class, doodling tiny flowers all over her textbook.

“Hatake Kakashi was the longest running Hokage, beating Uchiha Sarada by almost twenty years.” The pictures on the wall change with a loud ‘ _click’_ , showing the Hokage portrait of him. “It’s said that he laid the foundations of his predecessors into everlasting peace and eventual permanent alliance with our neighbours. Now can anyone tell me what made him so special?”

The teacher looks around and calls out, “Sakura.”

She fumbles, quickly flipping her page to match the teacher’s lecture. “He uhm—”

“He beat the shit out of them after the assassination of Hokage Naruto,” Ino whispered from behind her.

“He beat the shit out of them after the assassination of Hokage Naruto,” Sakura replies then pales after she realises that she had swore in front of the teacher.

“Yes… without the swearing next time, Sakura.”

“In AFV 76, the hidden nations were found by the outer nations. Of course, we no longer use _Hidden_ nations or _Outer_ nations, but it is said that our continent had been hidden away. Who? The scientists have yet to figure out, some say it was the Tree Goddess, some said it was the Uzumaki clan and others suggest that the Sage Hagoromo did it.” The teacher changes the slide to a drawing of a war-torn Konoha. AFV76, the Outer nations, now known as England, assassinated Hokage Naruto, thinking to cut the alliance off at the feet but instead enraged the _Hidden_ nations. Hokage Kakashi had blazed through their army—” 

The pictures on the wall change again, this time with an illustration of Kakashi with his chidori.

“Terrified the Outer nation mages into submission. Now, pay attention!” The teacher raps his knuckles on a dozing student’s desk. “Shikamaru, this _will_ be tested in wednesday’s test.”

Shikamaru shuffles upright and Sakura giggles at him. 

“Hokage Kakashi has a long list of things he was renowned for. So much so people like calling his name as a swear word. As though invoking his names would strike fear into people…” The teacher says dryly. “But so was Hokage Naruto. Name me one thing that Hokage Naruto is famous for.”

_Hokage Naruto?_

_The shortest reign of all the Hokages._

Sakura is looking at an aged photograph of Hokage Naruto sitting at a round table seemingly at ease with a group of fellow Kages, almost looking like they were just friends hanging out for coffee.

_They were friends?_

_If the records are right._

  
  


Sakura is standing on the rooftop of a building, staring out across the city. Tall buildings that seem to spiral into the sky are far out across the horizon for as far as she could see. In the distance there is the Hokage faces with maybe as many as fifteen or twenty faces. 

She tucks her hands into the sleeves of coat, even as white wisp escaped her mouth. The sun had just began to rise, filtering it’s rays across the buildings. 

“Sakura.”

She turns and smiles at the man leaning against the doorway. Dark hair and eyes as dark as shadows, unmistakably like a copy of Nara. 

“Shikamaru, what are you here for? Aside from me of course.”

“Troublesome woman.” He scratches his head and strolls to her as he unwraps his scarf, wrapping it around her gently. “You ran out yesterday.” He leaves his hands on her shoulders, pulling her close.

“I’m sorry—” Her shoulders shake/

“Don’t be. I’m not too disappointed about the seal ban.”

“Maru, I know—” 

He tucks her under her chin, cutting off her words. “Hush you. Just let me take care of my cousin, alright?”

_I— he’s— definitely a Nara. Rest now. I’ll… speak to the Hokage._


	3. Raidou and the Air Con

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which summer is hot, Sakura is done and Raidou thinks it's an enemy nin.

Sakura wakes to a grey, dingy ceiling, and a cot so thin that she could feel its metal frame beneath the mattress. 

Not a dream.

Not that she had doubted it. She had plenty of time to wake from the nightmare during her days of walking. The rat that she had inevitably carried through time lay next to her cot. Someone had fed and watered it during her sleep. 

Her skin seemed to crack as she blinks, breaking the dried tear tracks from her eyes. She was both mentally and physically exhausted. She just wanted to go home, to her apartment on the twenty-third floor, to its view of endless buildings. She wanted Shikamaru to be dropping by because his job was so boring that he found joy in solving equations for her work. She wanted to wake up cursing at Tomoe for crying at three in the morning again, babysitting for Yuuichi, talking shit about Maya to Ino.

She takes a shuddering breath and covers her eyes with her arm. 

“By the Sixth Hokage, fuck this.”

“Are you awake?” 

Sakura looks up startled, only to see the scarred face man outside the cell. “Uh—” 

“Namiashi Raidou, Haruno-san.” He unlocks the door and sets a tray of food on the table in the middle of the cell. “When you’ve eaten, we can go.”

The food is not fancy, grilled saba with white rice, miso soup, pickles and umeboshi, but her stomach rumbles at the sight of food. It’s been days since she last ate now that she’s thought about it.

“Where are we going?” she asks as she practically shoves the food into her mouth.

Raidou puts a set of sandals next to her bare feet. “Looks like it’ll fit. Wasn’t sure if I got the right size.” He takes out a towel and puts it next to her elbow. “We are going to see the Hokage to get you your papers,” he replies.

She wipes the dirt from her feet with water supplied from the tiny sink attached to one of the walls and sticks her feet into the sandals. It’s weird how everyone seems to wear open-toed sandals. Is there a reason for it? 

Sakura hugs Rat-320’s cage, quietly following Raidou through the confusing hallways. Not a single sign on the hallways and all exactly identical. She couldn’t help but wonder how people who worked here navigated them. She places a hand on the hallways, feeling a pulse of chakra running through the walls. 

A seal? Chakra-conductive stone? 

She remembered that Suna had come up a way of imbuing chakra into the stone and metal they made which increased the amount of seals that the individual stones could handle. It made temperature regulation easy. 

But had CCS been around since this era? Weird. She remembered discussing about its invention with Yuuichi, since because of its invention, seal innovation had exploded…

“Haruno-san,” Raidou clears his throat, gently pulling her hand from the walls. “I would recommend _not_ touching the walls.” He smiles a grim smile. “There have been cases where the walls have eaten people up.”

Quickly, Sakura backs from the wall, one hand gripping the back of his vest. 

Walls that eat people? What kind of place would have walls that _eat_ people? Even the police station and prisons didn’t have that! People here are _insane._ She should know this. Only insane people jump on rooftops after all!

She swallows nervously. If there’s an accidental way here, then there _has_ to be a way back. Sakura refuses to think that the seal had been three years of work between the brightest minds the world had to offer, including the occasional help from Shikamaru who had been banned from officially ever working on seals.

The Hokage issues her some weird paper that seemed to be her identification and she allows Raidou to usher out of the building and into the streets. 

For now, she would stay with Raidou until Genma is out of the hospital. It seemed strange that they didn’t have an empty apartment for her to stay in until she got herself home to her time. Konoha - the one from her time - had several empty apartments lying around for ambassadors and what not. 

The apartment is a cosy two room apartment.

“It’s clear you either live alone or live with another guy,” she says dryly.

Raidou rubs the back of his head sheepishly. “Is it that obvious?”

She eyes the posters of naked girls with Icha Icha across it and slowly looks back at him. “You think?”

He laughs and ushers her to a room. “Well, this is my room. You can sleep here temporarily. I’ll sleep in Genma’s room.”

The bed is a plain single one and the room is surprisingly clean. “Why don’t you sleep in your room and I sleep in Genma’s?” 

“Well… Genma is a _poison_ specialist… It’d be incredibly awkward if you accidentally got poisoned,” he says and motions to a cupboard. “You can put your clothes there.”

“Yes… please let me unpack from my non-existent suitcase.” She shakes her head and sighs. “Sorry, I’m just—”

“Overwhelmed?” Raidou gives her a smile. “Understandable. Kurenai, my female colleague has promised to take you shopping. I’d take you… but honestly, I only know the shinobi’s outfitters shop. And it’s not like you could… or would wear it.” 

“ _Raidouu—”_ yells a female voice from down the hallway.

“There she is, right on time.” He turns and calls out, “Kurenai, over here.”

A dark-haired woman with the reddest eyes Sakura had ever seen peers through the door. Sakura couldn’t help stare at her. Why in the name of Kakashi’s saggy balls would anyone, _anyone_ wear bandages as a dress? She twitches involuntarily to grab the blanket and wrap it around the woman. Sakura had thought Ino’s fashion sense had been weird enough, along with her crop tops that barely covered the bottom of her boobs.

Isn’t it cold with bandages barely covering anything, she wonders.

“So this is her,” the woman says and waves. “Hello, I’m Yuuhi Kurenai.”

“I am her,” Sakura replies, deciding to ignore the woman’s weird fashion. It’s only ten in the morning and she is already done with everything. Sakura is almost tempted to just wrap herself in blankets and never come out until 2000 years later, except her clothes are a mess. Muddied, sweaty and streaked with the blood of Raidou’s… _teammate?_

“So, shopping?” Sakura asks and Kurenai nods. She lets Kurenai usher her down the horribly archaic apartments. 

What kind of apartments don’t have short range lift teleportation to the different floors? If she’s going to walk up five floors of stairs every day, she’s going to have _strong_ words.

Every now and then Sakura eyes her new companion from the corner of her eyes. Every now and then Kurenai would point out one of the shops, clearly trying to show her the area and make her more comfortable, but despite the chatter Sakura still felt awkward in the female's presence. Kurenai was pretty much a stranger. Judging from the weird metal plate that Kurenai wore too, Sakura guessed that Kurenai could _probably_ kill her before Sakura could even blink. Though that dress… Wouldn’t it open up…?

Sakura forced herself to focus on the streets. The dusty roads that had never heard of pavements or auto-cleaning seals to the almost eccentric posts with wires. What an engineering nightmare. 

It is with a sense of relief that Sakura entered the store, where Kurenai is politely holding the door open for her. The clothes in the shop weren’t as strange as what Kurenai was wearing. Sakura rubbed the fabric with her fingers. Had fabric manufacturing changed so much in the future? It seemed so strange to feel the coarse cloth.

“This is a nice dress,” Kurenai says, holding out a red dress. 

“It is, but the cloth…” Sakura reaches over to rub the fabric. Perhaps it’s a common kind of fabric?

“It’s 100% cotton, it’ll keep you nice and cool in our summer.”

Why would she need cloth to keep her cool? Do they not just have temperature seals?

Sakura roughly picked out a set of clothes to wear, threw some underwear along and some bathroom stuff. It seems that every these are norm here. She’s here to stay until she can figure the seal back home. It shouldn’t take her that long.

She hopes at least.

✥.✥.✥

It’s three days into her stay at Raidou’s home where she’s completely, a hundred and one thousand percent done with AFV 56 Konoha. 

Konoha in this time, is absolutely anarchic. 

The heat beats down on the streets and into the apartment. They have _no_ aircon, they have no thermoregulating seals, no hot water seal, no ice seals. And by the balls of Kakashi, who walks up 5 floors of stairs _every day?_ Maybe that’s why there are so many “shinobi” around. All of them taking advantage of the fact that it takes them a leap to jump into the corridor of wherever they’re staying. 

Sakura sure as hell isn’t able to do that, and she sure as hell isn’t going to climb _ten_ flights of stairs.

“By the balls of Minato and Kakashi!” Sakura forces herself off the floor where she had sprawled in an effort to leech the coolness from the wooden floors. Raidou isn’t going to come back for another hour or so. He had politely asked her to stay indoors as though she was crazy even to even venture out in this heat. 

Thermoregulating seals aren’t difficult to draw. Hell, she and like the rest of her extended family learnt to do them before they even finished middle school. 

She unseals her chakra ink and brushes and starts drawing the seals on the corners of the apartment. It doesn’t even take her more than thirty minutes to finish them and turn on the thermostat control. 

Blessed cold air fills the apartment. She should probably draw the temperature seals in the bathroom. Would be nice to have regular hot and cold water again, not the sad clunky ‘wait fifteen minutes for the pipes to pull hot water up’ kind of hot water.

“Bah. I’m already at it.” Sakura shrugs and decides to modernise the rest of the apartment. If she don’t do this, she’s probably not going to be able to concentrate on her seals. 

✥.✥.✥

Raidou is pleased that Genma had done a full recovery. Had it not been for the unknown seals the pink haired woman, Genma would have been home a week ago. Of course, had it not been for her seals, Genma would have died. The medics had told him that and Raidou had been grateful enough to vouch and block everyone who tried to get their hands on Sakura.

A life debt isn’t something he or Genma should brush off. A shinobi who didn’t respect life debts is the scum on the bottom of their sandals. Even the Hokage had respected his insistence of attempting to assist Sakura’s entry into Konoha. Inoichi had confirmed that she wasn’t crazy and _yes,_ she is from thousands of years in the future. 

_Thousands_ years in the future. 

Raidou shudders. What is Konoha thousands years in the future like? Apparently according to Inoichi, no shinobis. A world without shinobis is a strange thought. 

He leaps up the apartment block, ignoring Shikaku following him who has insisted that he should meet the girl that is closely related to his clan. The Nara has supposedly laid claim to her, due to the genetic test that made her fifty percent Nara. 

Whatever. 

Raidou channels chakra into his security, unlocking the door and is hit by a gush of cold air. 

_Has an enemy come into their apartment!?_

He kicks the door down, startling Sakura at the dinner table. 

“Wha—”

Raidou motions her to stay silent as he and Shikaku clears the apartment, trying to find the shinobi that had entered their apartment. Sakura is surprisingly still clear and—

“Raidou, what in the name of Kakashi’s balls are you doing?”

He turns to face her. “Did you see—” He sees a seal on the corner of the ceiling. A seal!

 _Seals,_ he signals to Shikaku. 

_There’s one more here,_ Shikaku signs back.

“Sakura, come here,” he says, trying to get her away from the unknown seal. They have to get her out first. Safety first then tracking. 

“What?”

“Quickly!” 

Instead of listening to his instructions, she follows his stare to the seal in the ceiling. “Oh those. I drew them. I got sick of the heat.”

“You. Got. Sick. of the heat,” Raidou repeats.

“You drew those…?” Shikaku says.

“Yea. It’s ridiculous how you guys don’t even have aircon.” She shrugs and returns to her papers.

“Aircon. Like those boxes of air you stick into your vents?” Shikaku asks.

“Mmm. Aircon seals. Why on earth do you want to build a box to change temperature when you can do it with seals,” she replies absentmindedly. 

Raidou stares at the seals in horror.

There’s no way Anbu is going to let them stay here with untested, unauthorised seals. 

His security deposit!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please do take note that this story is fairly indulgent and crackish. I'm not terribly bothered on being in-character what not.


	4. Shikaku and the House

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which a house goes missing, Shikaku is done, Raidou is glad they moved out, Shikamaru is introduced to their new resident troublemaker and Rat-320 would like to not be missing. Also no one has noticed Rat-320 going missing with the house too.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Merry Christmas guys! Have an early christmas present from me ☺

Ridiculous, Sakura thinks as she slumps across the engawa. Not only had they moved her out of the house that she had taken time to modernise, Raidou had also confiscated her brushes and ink along with a three hour lecture.

It’s like they _want_ to be in the dark ages. At least now that she and Raidou are being put up at with the Naras, she don’t have to climb the stairs anymore. 

The house _is_ a lot nicer than Raidou’s apartment. They actually have a bathtub, except… the bathtub is those super old kind. What kind of bathtub don’t have heat retention seals? Or even the heat regulation seals?

She struggles with her seal notes for another minute or two. It’s difficult to concentrate when the heat is unbearable, the sun pours down in unfiltered brightness and the silence is deafening. 

Surely Raidou won’t kill her if she scratched a music seal? Or maybe draw one on paper? That way she’s not _exactly_ drawing on the walls. Would it even be able to reach the radio stations?

She doodles some of the radio stations she remembers Shikamaru sketching. If she uses the Amatsu-Mikaboshi glyph together with the Hibiki set and maybe the Fuujin…

Sakura is in the midst of sketching it out when she freezes. “Balls of Kakashi,” she mutters. “Why am I using god named glyphs?”

“I’m assuming using god named glyphs is bad?” Says a voice in front of her. 

Slowly, she looks up. “Shikaku-san! What a pleasant surprise to see you!” She says brightly, trying to hide her seals but Shikaku plucks them out before she can even sit on them.

“Breaking the rules barely a day into staying on our compound, aren’t you?” He raises an eyebrow at her and turns back to her papers. “So, what are all these things and why is using god named glyphs bad?”

“Uhm.” Sakura sits upright, trying her best to not feel like she’s sitting in front of her high school principal again - not that she did that… _much._

He mutters at the different words arranged in a circle. “This is so different compared to the ones I see Jiraiya-san use.”

“I’m not surprised. Uzumaki Naruto had revolutionized a lot of the seals.”

“But according the Inoichi, you said that Naruto had the shortest reign.” He takes a seat next to her and takes out small packs from his plastic bag.

“Well…” Sakura takes the box of takoyaki from him. It’s piping hot, not quite she had wished to eat, but beggars can’t be choosers, she supposes. “Uzumaki Naruto had the shortest reign as a Hokage. But he was one of the Hokages which had the biggest impact. He revolutionized the way seals worked; he created the Peace Alliance. It was because he was so powerful that the Outers had taken him out to demoralise the PA.”

“The Peace Alliance?”

Sakura shrugs. “To be honest, his seals revolution was far more impactful that the creation of PA.”

“I’d have assumed that having peace would have been more impactful.”

She hums, carefully chewing the takoyaki. “His seals generated far more peace than the PA.”

“ _Really?_ ” Shikaku closely inspected her glyphs again. “So god name glyphs. Why is that bad?”

“Uhhh… becausetheyareusuallyusedfortimespaceormedical,” Sakura quickly blurts out. 

Shikaku heaves a long and large sigh. “ _Please_. I beg of you. Don’t make me walk out here one morning to find that the house have disappeared.”

“Whaaat. That doesn’t happen.”

He gives her a dry look.

“OKAY. It doesn’t happen very often.” She looks away. “You vaporise the department once and they think you do it every time,” she mutters under her breath.

“I’m starting to think that putting you here in the furthest house was the right idea.” Shikaku pinches his nose. “I. Am not even going to ask what these new seals are.”

“Please. For the love of the sage and everything good. Keep it to pencil and paper. And _don’t_ activate anything without us.”

She nods and Shikaku leaves relieved.

But really. She had been good for one week!

“I’m trying _really_ hard to remember why I let the elder council adopt you into our compound,” Shikaku says. 

Sakura shrinks, trying to make herself as small as possible. “I… didn’t disintegrate the house?”

“You didn’t disintegrate the house,” Shikaku repeats flatly, looking pointedly at the very obvious missing house. He forces himself to take a slow breath. “Raidou?”

Raidou runs a weary hand through his hair. “Sir. At about three a.m, I noticed a spike of chakra. I rushed to her room, noticing nothing out of place, I grabbed Sakura and leapt out of the window. I did not notice any other chakra signatures, but the spike of chakra signature increased drastically, at which the Anbu arrived. The house disappeared and then...” He spreads his hands helplessly. “You arrived.”

By now the sun has rose, stretching its ray across the forest and very empty patch of land that had still parts of the foundation on it.

“Sakura. Explain.”

“By the balls of Kakashi! I drew them with pencil on paper, as specified. I hadn’t expected that Amaterasu with the Amatsu-Mikaboshi glyph on the caudal of the sea would have caused the seal to start absorbing nature chakra.” She toes the earth with her bare feet. “To be fair, it’s not… disintegrated. It’s just… kinda… a little out of place? Out of time.”

“Out of time,” Shikaku repeats.

“I’m thinking that it had been such a stroke of luck that we were moved out of the apartment,” Raidou says faintly. 

“Okay. _Okay._ This is what is going to happen.” He turns to Sakura, in which Raidou quickly edges from her. “ _You,_ are going to sit out here. You are not going to touch anything. No pencil, no pens. And for the love of the sage of six paths, NO SEALS.”

“But how am I going to bring the house back if I—”

“Nope. No. No seals. That’s final.”

“Saggy balls of Kakashi, you can’t—”

“And to make sure that sticks...” The Anbu team at the scene and Raidou flickered away as Shikaku spun around, leaving his son behind. “Shikamaru!” 

The boy did a weird almost Nara patented straighten slump, remarkably similar to her version of Shikamaru. Between her Shikamaru and him, there were some differences, but not a whole lot. The Naras here, on the whole, had darker skin with flatter features but with droopy eyes. Her Naras, her Shikamaru, had sharp jaws and sharp nose. 

“You’re going to watch her.” He marches Shikamaru to her. 

“Troublesome,” Shikamaru mutters and tugs her by her sleeve. “Come on.”

“So you’re _Shikamaru_ ,” she asks the little nine year old. 

The nine year old grumps to her not quite question. “And you’re the troublemaker.”

“Is that right?” Somehow recalling her first meeting with her Shikamaru.

“That’s what Dad’s been calling you.”

Admittedly their first meeting of her seals going haywire hasn’t been the best of the first impressions, but Sakura’s a little miffed on being called _troublemaker._

“It’s not really my fault. Yes my calculations are a bit off, but Amatersu and Amatsu-Mikaboshi has never really reacted that way.” She taps her chin, letting Shikamaru guide her very intently, leading her further into the forest before finally reaching a clearing filled with small wildflowers. She pauses in her musing, staring back at the deer. The deer watch her from a slight distance. Shikamaru flops onto the ground and she takes a seat next to him. 

Okay, AFV 56 Konoha could take this for a win. Her Konoha didn’t have wilderness like this or wildlife like this. The Nara “forest” had been a tiny square with an equally tiny herd of deer. 

Sakura looks up at the clear morning sky. The sound of the leaves rustling, birds chirping in the distance filling her ears, it’s not the same. 

“Definitely not the Amatsu-Mikaboshi glyph together with the Hibiki set. Hibiki with the GGBB on the rostral. The stroke count of GGBB would match Hibiki…” She mutters, sketching it on the ground.

“No.” The nine year old kid grabs her hand. His stern look almost makes her laugh. 

“No?”

“Dad said no more seals.”

“But it’s not my fault that the house got shifted out of time,” Sakura whines. “The seal I drafted is almost exactly the one we used in the lab. Ah. What if it did exactly what it needed to and shifted them to Konoha.”

“... This _is_ Konoha.”

She waves his words away. “Ancient Konoha. Not modern Konoha. Where we have aircon, and chilled streets in summer and warm streets in winter. And lift teleportation…” She pulls her hand out of his and continues sketching her seal.

“No!” He grabs her hand again.

“Come onn _nnn_. Indulge a little,” she wheedles. “It’d would be great to have a working radio. And it’s just on the earth. It’s not like it’s on some kind of infrastructure!”

“First of all. I'm already indulging you by listening to you. Instead of napping like I came here to do—”

She laughs. “No, _you_ came here cuz your dad kicked me out and was worried I'd draw seals somewhere else.”

“Second of all,” Chibi Shikamaru continues as though she hadn’t interrupted him. “The _earth_ is a flat continuous thing. If your so called unchanneled chakra could make a house disappear—”

“It didn’t _disappear._ It’s just shifted out of time. Terminology is important!”

“— Then I’d hate to see what a flat continuous thing _like the earth_ could do.” 

She sulks. “I just want aircon and ice cream and music.” 

“Troublesome. I don’t know what ice cream is but I’m sure Chouji knows someone who does.” He releases her hand and flops back onto the ground. 

“I’m not troublesome,” Sakura grumbles. “I’m Haruno. Crazy like the Harunos cause they have too much Nara in them.”

Shikamaru quirks an eyebrow at her.

“Don’t you have that saying here?” She asks. 

He eyes her hair. “Haven’t heard of it. But you don’t look Nara. Are you a half?”

“A half? Half of what? Which by the way, that sounded incredibly racist… _clanist._ ” No one in her Konoha cared unless they had a bit too much Uchiha or Senju in them. People with too much Uchiha had to undergo mandatory therapy sessions to prevent them from over-obsessing over things and Senjus often needed a babysitter of sorts. She winces inwardly remembering her Senju cousins exploding things just to figure how it works.

“It just means half Nara. Not racist at all.” Shikamaru props his head on his hand. “But Dad said we adopted you. That usually means you’re a bastard of sorts. Considering your weird manners and words… I would say you’re a time traveller.”

She shrugs. “Got that in a hole. But I’m not half Nara. More like a quarter? Took the genetic test way back when I was a kid.”

“A genetic test?”

“Yea. It’s mandatory to do a genetic test when we enter school. Some genes are more prone to certain issues or require special teaching techniques. Like Uzumakis being generally hyperactive or ADD, Uchiha had their general inability to relax, haruno and Nara and their craziness.”

“So… is that why you like to say balls of Kakashi?”

“Wellllll…” Sakura chuckles, remembering the time when Ino and her had found done a book report on Hatake Kakashi. “Hatake Kakashi was a pretty prolific man. He had like twenty-eight children.” 

There is a muffled _WHAT_ from the trees and she turns to look at them. Trees aren’t supposed to talk… But if walls eat people here, then trees might talk here, Sakura supposes.

AFV 56 Konoha is weird.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have chapter titles for our next few chps if anyone is interested and a growing glossary of glyph names, also if anyone is interested. Some of the glyph names are ridiculous and none of which are important. 
> 
> GGBB - Gorugoru boomboom
> 
> Our next few chapter titles in no particular order:  
> Konoha Administration and the tin can  
> Nara clan and the pipes  
> Anbu division and the piece of paper  
> Kakashi and his balls  
> The ice cream machine war
> 
> Friendly reminder! This fic is crack, I absolutely don't care if characters are OOC or if everything is just too convenient. Take nothing seriously.


	5. Where the Missing house went [C4 Continuation]

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which a house appears on the top of an apartment block.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know it's not a full chp, but eh. I thought it would be funny to find out what happened to the house. Also Sakura wants her rat back.

“Shikaito-sama! Shikaito-sama!” Yells a frazzled looking guard.

“Stop yelling, take a deep breath Haruto.” 

The frazzled man, Haruto, takes several gulping breaths. “Shikaito-sama!” 

“Now what is it?” Shikaito asks, already kneading his temples. The World Seal Association is going to go ballistic with Sakura’s new accident. Harunos. Why did his uncle have to marry a Haruno?

“A house,” Haruto manages to say. “A house appeared on our new apartments.”

“ _Which_ new apartment?” And why in Sarada and Kakashi’s name, a house?

“Our new thirty-five storey apartment, sir. The one in the middle of Old Nara district.” He swallows dryly. “The ones that cost five million each.”

“A house. On our new Old Nara district apartments.”

“Yes sir. It… destroyed the penthouse.”

“The one that costs twenty million?”

“Yes…”

Shikaito sighs long and loud. It has Sakura’s prints all over it. Better distract Shikamaru from— 

“Old man!” Shikamaru budges into his office. 

Can’t he catch a break? Shikaito thinks to himself. “Now what?”

“The house that crashed into the apartments. It’s like those old ancient houses in the museum, just in new shape.”

“That’s nice.”

Shikamaru holds up a cage with a very angry looking rat and some papers. “And it has Sakura’s rat with her notes on it.”

“In the name of Sarada and Kakashi, please tell me there’s her too.” _So I can strangle her,_ Shikaito doesn’t adds. 

“Uh. No.”

“Can it send me back in time to stop my uncle from marrying Tsukimi-obasan?” 

Shikamaru blinks at Shikaito then at Sakura’s notes. “Uh…”

“No. _No. NO._ If it’s time travel, I _don’t want to hear it.”_ Shikaito stands. He’s going to pack his bag and go for a vacation in Uzushio or something. Somewhere far, far, far away from the World Seal Association. “I’m done. I’m out. You're the clan head now.” 

“Shikaito-sama, the World Seal Association council is here,” his secretary says as she enters the office, bowing at Shikamaru. 

“No. Shikamaru is the Clan head now. BYE!”

✥.✥.✥

“Anbu Crow, so you’re telling me the house reappeared two hours later and Sakura was _nowhere_ near the house?” Shikaku asks the Anbu again.

Anbu Crow nods and points in the direction of the forest where the rest of his squad is. 

“It just… _appeared_ and reattached itself to the foundation?”

Anbu Crow nods again.

“And her rat cage has a note stuck to it?” Shikaku asks, unsure if he should be shocked or amazed or just relieved. Maybe he’s feeling Sakuraized? Shock, amazed, relieved and angry all at the same time? That sounds almost right.

_Use the Sarutahiko glyph, Stupid. Now get your ass back so my dad will stop running from the WSA - Shikamaru._

Yea. He’s feeling Sakurarized. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Also, no Sakura is not going to get home so quick. There's a lot more shenanigans.


	6. Anbu division and the piece of paper

Truth to be told, Crow didn’t really think much of Haruno Sakura except that he had placed Sakura under “tentative ally”. Anyone who assisted his friend is in his good books. Especially when he heard that Horse would have died had she not assisted. 

Crow had accepted to be her observer hoping to return the favour. With memories of war not too long ago, most Konohanians didn’t take very kindly to outsiders. Her features were definitely similar to many of Konoha, but her hair screamed foreigner. He was going to make sure she stayed safe from over-zealous civilians. 

Crow hadn’t counted on Sakura being a Yondaime-reincarnate. Or worse, a Kushina mixed with Yondaime reincarnate. He still has flashbacks from the one time he responded to Yondaime’s emergency call, only to be tripped… and have his armor shredded… and his uncovered skin to be dyed in orange for weeks. Only to find out that Yondaime had gone on a seal bender and had now somehow gotten both him and his wife tied to the bedposts naked.

But then, _at least_ Yondaime had been an established seal’s master and was trusted to - at the very least - not explode things.

Crow very carefully transports the pieces of wall from Hawk’s apartment to the barrier division.

“I don’t think _that_ should be here,” Santa says. 

“It’s fuinjutsu. This is the barrier division.”

“That’s right!” Kakoi yells from the back of the room. “ _Ba-rri-er!_ Not fuinjutsu.”

“Which is where the fuinjutsu testing division is also located…” 

He looks helplessly at them. “Santa-san, I have been ordered to bring it here.” Crow quickly drops it on Santa’s desk and flickers away before they can rebuke him. Not his problem anymore. 

✥.✥.✥

Of course, Sakura wouldn’t just stop herself at making cooling seals. Crow should have seen it coming. 

Crow should have seen it coming from a whole country away. 

“Anbu Crow,” Shikaku holds out a piece of paper with his two fingers. “Take this… this… paper and bring it to the Barrier division for inspection.”

Shikaku wants _him_ to bring the piece of paper to the Barrier division. The paper with a seal on it that made a whole house disappear. 

Crow wonders if it’s too late to back out of being Sakura’s observer. He can feel his team giving him the death glare for the umpteeth time. Surely it _can’t_ get any crazier than a seal that makes a house disappear?

After the argument with the barrier division yet again, and Yamanaka Santa cleverly managing to slip it back onto him, Crow has no choice but to bring it to the Anbu division’s fuinjutsu team. 

In retrospect, he should have just burnt it instead of bringing it _anywhere._

Anbu Commander Jaguar glares at him from where her desk used to be. Crow could almost see her sharingan trying to burn him.

“Explain to me why my entire Anbu division is missing a building.”

“Uh… Ma’am… Shikaku-sama, he uh…”

“Commander!” Tiger, the traitor, kneels before Jaguar, hand pressed across his heart. “Last morning, Asset Haruno Sakura made her house disappear at three a.m. The house reappeared with the seal. Shikaku-sama ordered Anbu Crow to submit it to the barrier division.”

“Then tell me, Anbu Captain Crow. _Why_ is it in the Anbu building?” Jaguar’s voice grows colder with each word.

“Uh…” Crow swallows dryly. “Ya… Yamanaka… Santa refused to accept... and then...”

“My entire Anbu division is missing a building!” She waves her hand to where the building used to stand around them. Never mind that they were standing in a circle of squads of Anbu glaring down at him. “So you tell me. How are you going to fix—”

Suddenly there’s a surge of chakra and they all freeze, reaching for their weapons when floors, ceilings, chairs and tables appear out of nowhere.

Jaguar evacuates them out of the building, where they stand outside the building henged in civilian clothes, staring back at the once-disappeared, but now re-appeared Anbu building. Like it had just hours ago. As though nothing had changed. 

Jaguar heaves a loud and long sigh. “Anbu Crow. You will find that seal and you will burn it. And don’t ever bring another back into the division!”

“Yes ma’am!” 

Crow leaps back into the building, shifting through the papers for the seal, meanwhile feeling… what’s the word Shikaku-sama had used? 

Yes, feeling Sakurarized. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter was picked by Waytoo! 
> 
> So now we have a few more titles in no particular order:  
> Konoha Administration and the tin can  
> Nara clan and the pipes  
> Kakashi and his balls  
> The ice cream machine war
> 
> Oh but wait, next chapter is 7, which means here COMES GENMA! *drumroll* we shall see what ridiculousness my muse comes up with
> 
> btw, Crow isn't Itachi. It's Shisui


End file.
